Blomdor wrote:I'm having a bit of a dilemma with Crawl. I don't love it when I'm not a formicid now.

I have a similar problem in that it's hard to play non-chei since I play chei for roughly 50% or more of my games. I don't like not being able to wear heavy armor, have huge dodging skill/EV, and cast magic at the same time. What do you mean, focus on one thing? Just to be able to pillar dance? Pillar dancing is boring anyways....

When I die to Sojobo because I actually can't hit her. The death was stupid; I had healing and all, but I just...couldn't believe it. I actually could not believe I was having trouble hitting things at XL24 or so with a +9 executioner's axe and nearly maxed skill in axes.

I've played a lot of games of Crawl. Somewhere over 5000 of them. Forty something or so of those are wins. Yes, I am terrible. But the point is, I've gotten to this point of the game with similar gear many, many times, and I *never* have accuracy issues at high levels. Never. Hitting things simply is not a problem. Certain player ghosts are an exception, but other than that I don't typically *notice* accuracy as a mechanic beyond Lair or so. Sojobo has 21 EV according to the wiki (correct me if mistaken). High for a monster, but not exactly insurmountable.

Bad luck? A buff to Sojobo I don't know about? I don't know, man.

I'm trying to get a win with Xom and keep running into weird things like this...

I have come to despise Xom's polymorph addiction. He'd be perfectly manageable without it. Seriously, nothing else he does outside of banishment is nearly as likely to result in Xom-induced game over. He can mutate me and drop lightning on my head and be an all around jerkass all he wants; the gifts, buffs, summons, and silliness he provides more than makes up for that.

Polymorph in general is a wonky mechanic for a number of reasons (spoilery, questionable utility, weird special rules for the different forms the player can take, yadda yadda), but I think Xom's obsession with turning orc warlords into quicksilver dragons into hellephants into golden dragons into caustic shrikes into shard shrikes and back into Hellephants again deserves a special place in the Crawl toilet. Yes, that actually happened on Orc:2 just now. Impossible for me to tell if it was just a polymorph into a particularly aggressive glowing shifter or just Xom going absolutely bonkers. He's also turned knights into fire crabs on me, and some D:1 trash into a wolf once. That's not even touching what happens when he decides to polymorph me. It'd be one thing if this was like banishment; awful, but rare enough that you don't have to play in constant fear of it. Xom polymorphs things left and right sometimes, and you're lucky if it *isn't* horrible.

I actually like it, but I can agree it is really dangerous at times. For instance, stay the hell away from Gastronok if you're worshiping xom. Keep it outside your LOS at all times unless you want a caustic shrike in d6 or wherever that slug spawns.It's also great fun mutating TRJ. Whatever comes out of that transformation is usually more manageable than the royal jelly.

basically there are 5 xom effects that make him really tedious to worship. in descending order of obnoxiousness:1. player form casts (you have to either play ultra-careful at all times, or just accept randomly dying to spider/ice/blade hands sometimes)2. teleport journeys (because they strongly incentivize going upstairs every time you want to rest)3. swaps (again, unless you play ultra-careful a swap can easily just randomly kill you, but not nearly as frequently as transmutation casts)4. incessant confusion5. monster polymorphs (just because it stops you from resting near plants in lair; if lair didn't have plants i would not consider xom monster polymorphs worse than any of his other acts. lair shouldn't have plants regardless, by the way)

...I find the hat of the alchemist for the first time in years, and it's now not worth wearing over my plain +1 helmet. As if to rub it in some more, a dude comes along in tileschat and compliments my luck in finding one of Crawl's best items.

asdu wrote:...I find the hat of the alchemist for the first time in years, and it's now not worth wearing over my plain +1 helmet. As if to rub it in some more, a dude comes along in tileschat and compliments my luck in finding one of Crawl's best items.

Well, even if you have all resists covered (including lajatang of order for orb of fire), you can equip +5 ring of protection since you lost just 4 AC.

I had just stepped onto the abyssal rune. There was a sleeping monster next to it, so no auto-pickup. I was one turn away from pressing ',' and I get pulled into a different part of the Abyss!!! No, I am not ^Xom.

They are out of place for d:15, they are not out of place for a d:15 vault though. But yeah, always do the optimal route and dont do d:15 before lair and orc, heck, dont even do d:12 before lair unless you are eager for a frances/rupert/kirke/"player ghost who already did orc/lair" combo.

I usually find the Lair entrance, and then go deeper into the dungeon until I meet something difficult before entering Lair. Then I do the same thing when I come out of lair before I go into Orc. Then I finish Dungeon before doing the first S branch. I usually go 1-2 floors deeper than the Lair entrance first, and then 1-2 floors deeper than that before Orc. Sometimes I get chased out of deeper Dungeon pretty quickly, sometimes I can go pretty far. Why? I guess just because when I developed the habit I felt comfortable in Dungeon-style terrain and less so in the more open Lair terrain, and now it's a habit.

This is dangerous, Erolcha/Louise can banish you as their first action in Dungeon without giving you a chance to do anything and they can never be found in Lair.Poor new players, death without spoilers is so easy...

Rupert can generate on D12-15 too, unlike Erolcha/Louise who never generate in Lair. Actually if you enter D12-15 before Lair, Rupert is more likely to spawn in D, than in L because this is how crawl generation works.

ichbins wrote:Huh, is that meant to be an argument? Okay, let's place some acid blobs in lair (cause it's one floor away from slime)

acid blobs can spawn in lair though

I'm quite sure I have already seen them there, but only in very small runed-door-vaults that don't allow you to teleport in. Can they spawn outside of them?

Yes

It's rare but it does happen.

Edit: my last 3 runs have had disto sythe sigmund in early D. Rude as fuck but thankfully 2 of those runs were skalds (ogre and merfolk) so the teste shrivling fear was balanced out nicely by endgame quality weapon greed. The third run was (yet another) NaEE who happened to run into a disto rapier as well on D5.

Bit of a dislike (oh sky cake no not again) vs like (ahahahaha now i am death destroyer of... something something) situation there.

The ice dragon tramples you but does no damage.The ettin hits you with a dire flail. The ettin hits you with a dire flail!!The great orb of eyes bites you but does no damage.The ice dragon bites you but does no damage.The ice dragon claws you but does no damage.The ice dragon tramples you but does no damage.The ettin hits you with a dire flail!* * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *The ettin hits you with a dire flail!!* * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *The great orb of eyes pulsates ominously.The great orb of eyes bites you but does no damage.The ice dragon breathes frost at you.The blast of cold hits you!* * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *The ettin hits you but does no damage. The ettin hits you with a dire flail!* * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *The great orb of eyes gazes at you.You are blasted!You die...

I hate it when I accidentally press [>] instead of [Shift][X][>] after fleeing upstairs. Lost a DDNe to a pack of death yaks on Lair:6 a few weeks ago this way, and just now a HEFE who could have easily nabbed that sweet whip of electrocution from the D:3 gnoll if I hadn't walked right back down the same stairs into its arms.

Casting: ApportationConfirm with ! or Enter, or press ? or * to list all spells!Aiming: ApportationPress: ? - help, Dir - move target cursorApport: an abyssal rune of ZotYoink!!! You pull the item towards yourself!You are suddenly pulled into a different region of the Abyss!!!

I just can't express how much I love this game! It's awesome and everyone should play it!

I don't love it when I'm blocked from ##crawl because I have to use a VPN to connect, as has happened twice in the last week. I love having ##crawl open while I play; as well as being a fund of detailed monster stats, occasional useful advice and the odd laugh, I just like feeling part of the community. Seeing all the death notices and win announcements go by. Grump.

(Yes, I have followed the instructions and contacted my VPN provider asking them to get in touch with freenode, I just needed to rant. Hope something is sorted soon)

TeFE. Cleared most of Swamp 1-4, got the Lernaean hydra vault, ran away because I could not think of a way to deal with it safely. Cleared Snake 1-3, got some new spells along the way, returned to Swamp 4. Killed a few enemies, went back to Swamp 3 and decided to go down using a different stairway. Then this happens:

When I die because of stupid mistakes. In this case both strategic and tactical. Playing Yiuf Crawl I decided for the sake of easy gameplay to just take a Dorf Fighter and ride that to fifteen runes, since it wouldn't be any different than the last time. And I was right on track for it too. Got the two S runes and the Slime rune, and then went to switch from Okawaru to TSO and grind The Crypt for piety. I've done this a few times before and it's not too bad. Except this time my primary weapon had been a demon whip, which of course I couldn't use until I could get it blessed. Which I couldn't do without six star piety. So I figured "hey I'll just drop my large shield of reflection and use this artifact great mace Okawaru gave me nothing'll go wrong because this is the only option other than like an artifact whip with holy wrath."

Well uh, it went wrong. I managed through most of Okawaru's wrath, and then just got nailed:

I made the mistake of counting on a successful defeat rather than burning yet another blink scroll or something, which was my tactical mistake. I'm mostly mad at myself; I'm tired and it's late and I knew I should've stopped playing, but of course, I don't listen. Sigh.

First world problem. What should I use vs orbs of fire: +13 vampiric great mace, +9 antimagic evenigstar, +7 lajatang of Order {silver, rMut} or +5 demon whip "Spellbinder" {god gift, antimagic, MR+}. Of course I have some slaying (Slay+3 on ring with *Corr, AC+2 and Str+7) and silver javelins at min delay to complicate it even more. Why can't it be easy?